Why You Should Be Atheist

[The Reality Salesman01]

Read: The End of Faith -Sam Harris

All of this questions are answered in a clear and succinct fashion.


You are limiting yourself to one question-"Why reject beliefs in God?"

The root problematic question is- "Are you capable of recognizing absolute absurdity VS a difference in opinion?"


Once that distinction is made as the focal point of the discussion, genuinely bad idea are the target; religion crumbles with them.

[Esquilax]

So you believe something you can't prove. That was all I wanted to know.

Nor do we have to prove a negative; the positive claim associated with it needs to be proved first.

If I see a bunch of people believing in something that they haven't been able to provide evidence for for over a millenia, that involves magic and talking animals and worldwide apocalyptic disasters, yet is not evidently true, how does that not qualify- from my perspective- as a delusion?

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

So you believe something you can't prove. That was all I wanted to know.

Nor do we have to prove a negative; the positive claim associated with it needs to be proved first.

If I see a bunch of people believing in something that they haven't been able to provide evidence for for over a millenia, that involves magic and talking animals and worldwide apocalyptic disasters, yet is not evidently true, how does that not qualify- from my perspective- as a delusion?

We're retreading old ground here.

That you think no evidence has been provided is reflective of your own ignorance, not of the work of theistic thinkers.

You need to familiarize yourself with the evidence.

[Esquilax]

We're retreading old ground here.

That you think no evidence has been provided is reflective of your own ignorance, not of the work of theistic thinkers.

You need to familiarize yourself with the evidence.

I expose myself to the arguments of theistic thinkers regularly, and even if I hadn't, it's not as though there aren't people like you and the other theists here who could present it to me and convert me, if they wanted to. The fact that, instead of doing so, you call me ignorant, says a lot about your approach.

I've read the threads, Vin. I've seen the arguments for god. But arguments aren't evidence, one cannot think a thing into existence, and those theistic thinkers are only as good as the biases they carry into their work.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

We're retreading old ground here.

That you think no evidence has been provided is reflective of your own ignorance, not of the work of theistic thinkers.

You need to familiarize yourself with the evidence.

I expose myself to the arguments of theistic thinkers regularly, and even if I hadn't, it's not as though there aren't people like you and the other theists here who could present it to me and convert me, if they wanted to. The fact that, instead of doing so, you call me ignorant, says a lot about your approach.

I've read the threads, Vin. I've seen the arguments for god. But arguments aren't evidence, one cannot think a thing into existence, and those theistic thinkers are only as good as the biases they carry into their work.

I'm not looking to convert you. I don't even think I could. Like they say, you can lead an atheist to water, but you can't make him think.

But I don't think knowledgeable atheists run around saying there are no reasons or evidence to justify religious belief. I'm sorry, but such a view is not representative of the position of educated atheists who are familiar with the various works and claims. Educated people are much more tentative (see what Carl Sagan believed).

For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. He used applied logic (theoretical physics, ie the application of mathematics to physics). If Higgs' work justified serious consideration of the hypothesized God particle in the absence of evidence, then theism can rightfully claim the same consideration.

Of course, speaking of evidence is itself a silly thing. Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? Does a lack of direct physical evidence necessarily justify a lack of belief, such as when your eyes are closed and you lack visual evidence that your girlfriend is lying next to you?

Intellectually responsible atheism is much more than merely declaring a lack of belief and goose-stepping about talking shit about religion. It ought to involve a familiarity with one's own intellectual position.

I mean, I'd love to discuss the alleged evidence if I can be confident in substantial responses (example) as opposed to imbecilic nerd-rage (example).

[max-greece]

"For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. "

And thereby created a scientific hypotheis that later developed into a theory that may become a widely accepted theory as the results from the LHC come in.

God appears to be stuck at the hypothesis stage.

"Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? "

If that non-physical entity is credited with creating all that is physical then yes - we would expect to find evidence of that.

Also - although not really relevant to this thread but your signature:

"Which makes Richard Dawkins the intellectual equivalent of an amputee, furiously waving his stumps in the air, boasting that he has no hands.""

Or it shows evolution in progress. The old hard wiring in the brain is changing as it is evolutionarily advantageous that we stop allocating things we don't understand to magic and start trying to investigate and understand them through scientific method.

Its also not usually a good idea for a theist who believes in a miracle working God to bring up amputee's.

[Esquilax]

I'm not looking to convert you. I don't even think I could. Like they say, you can lead an atheist to water, but you can't make him think.

It doesn't matter whether you're looking to convert me or not; evidence would do so if you had it to present. Like most things Ray Comfort says, that line of yours is willfully inaccurate, designed to make theists feel better over the failure of their position, rather than reflecting something accurate about atheists.

If you can't prove yourself right, just attack those who can, right?

But I don't think knowledgeable atheists run around saying there are no reasons or evidence to justify religious belief. I'm sorry, but such a view is not representative of the position of educated atheists who are familiar with the various works and claims. Educated people are much more tentative (see what Carl Sagan believed).

And I shouldn't really need to remind people that when I speak, I'm just doing it on my behalf; I'm a guy, not some atheist meta-consciousness. When I look, I don't find evidence so much as I do rationalizations and circumstantial fragments of data that don't point to anything directly, but are used by theist to confirm the religion they already have.

If you guys want to believe based on that, or on personal revelation or what have you, then great. I don't.

For instance, intelligent atheists would recognize that evidence (defined narrowly) is not wholly relevant. Peter Higgs predicted the Higgs Boson mathematically before we had a shred of physical evidence. He used applied logic (theoretical physics, ie the application of mathematics to physics). If Higgs' work justified serious consideration of the hypothesized God particle in the absence of evidence, then theism can rightfully claim the same consideration.

Two key differences; one is that the Higgs Boson wasn't declared to be real by healthy chunks of the population until the experimental evidence confirmed it. The proponents of the Higgs Boson hadn't had thousands of years- since before the advent of the modern day scientific method- to find this evidence, they managed to do so in something like fifty years.

The other key difference is that Higgs went through the scientific community in order to gain acceptance of his theory; he had his papers published, a theoretical framework and experimental standard was set up, complete with falsifiability, which were executed on and found to be accurate. Where are the same for god?

I fully agree; your god hypothesis should be held to the same standards, and if any of the multitude of theists in the world would care to take the same methodology, go through the same channels, and develop a method by which god can be tested, then they should. It should happen, and should merit the same level of scrutiny and thought as any other claim. But are you aware of this happening? Can you think of a single example of god coming under the same microscope the Higgs Boson did?

There are religious organizations with the money to fund things like this, no matter how expensive, they just don't. Instead, they litigate their science in through the back door, or create their own journals instead of going through peer review like any other theory would.

If you've got a problem with the level of honest attention the god hypothesis is receiving, then the people you should be complaining to are the creationists who won't put it up to the same scrutiny.

Of course, speaking of evidence is itself a silly thing. Do you expect to find physical evidence of a non-physical entity? Does a lack of direct physical evidence necessarily justify a lack of belief, such as when your eyes are closed and you lack visual evidence that your girlfriend is lying next to you?

If god interacts with the physical world, the effects can be tested. If they can't, if there's no way to detect him from a human perspective, then how can anyone be justified in believing it?

Philosophy is great for some things, but you can't use it to prove something to exist without corroboration, because on its own its just thoughts. And the works in theoretical mathematics and so on are also worthwhile of thought, but they certainly don't justify the operating assumption that god is real that the religious edifice has.

It's weird; I agree with some of what you're saying, but the spirit behind your thinking and the actual reality that we atheists are experiencing and dealing with on a daily basis reveals the problem with it; you are right that all ideas should be given the same investigative rigor, the weird part is that you're addressing this to the wrong group of people.

[Dunno]

We're retreading old ground here.

That you think no evidence has been provided is reflective of your own ignorance, not of the work of theistic thinkers.

You need to familiarize yourself with the evidence.

So people are hard wired for faith. Being an atheist doesn't mean I don't have a lot of faith. But I do not express this faith in any organized religion. I have faith in myself and I have faith in the human species. Even though there are people like you, that say that my lack of faith means that I am an amputee, or at least your quote did, who are you to judge me? What do you know of my upbringing? My faith is that people will continue to create and discover more, and my hope is that someday all people will get along, even though at this time of war and oppression, that hope seems futile, I have faith that people will change, and see the wrong they enacted on humanity. So you see, faith is about believing in yourself and others, even though you're nothing, you're useless, you're stupid, you have faith that you're great.

Because being an atheist means having faith in the entire human species, it is actually a far more humanistic way of looking at life than any other religion has ever attempted. Religions disagree and fight over their imaginary beings, while I just have faith in the human species, something real, as one, all the humans that cover the earth, and faith in myself. But we must remember that humans are good and bad, and to encourage the good, so far as we understand, because every person is important.

[The Reality Salesman01]

@Dunno

It's true that there are different meanings of faith.

It seems as though you continue to defend a meaning that nobody here is disputing. The meaning you describe is more akin to believing something. But one can generate any number of objective and verifiable reasons to support all of the things you listed. For example, you said:

"My faith is that people will continue to create and discover more"

You have the evidence of human achievements across thousands of years to support this claim, and therein, objective evidence to back it up. Evidence that can be verified by a third party.

This is not the kind of faith we take issue with.

A claim about a God does not correlate with our experience of reality, and it is indistinguishable from a comforting lie. When someone says they have faith in God's existence, they are committing themselves to believing something without having any basis for the belief whatsoever. It's the epitome of a blind and baseless assumption supported by circular reasoning and kept alive by self delusion and arrogance.

---

In short, your usage of the word faith, and the context in which you are applying it, is creating disagreement. There are perhaps more accurate words to describe the sentiment you are trying to convey. At least, that's the way it appears.

[Zazzy]

Faith is believing something without evidence. When I say I have faith in myself that I can achieve something, it isn't actually faith- I know my abilities and have a lifetime of experience to help me draw on. I don't have faith that my partner will treat me well- I believe he will because he always has. I can't think of a single thing I have faith in, but I believe many things.